


sometimes pieces of us linger

by Llwy



Category: Dishonored (Video Games), Gotham (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Ed gets to play detective, Kinda, M/M, No Dishonored Knowledge Required, This is mostly just Gotham with some Dishonored elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:22:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25158433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llwy/pseuds/Llwy
Summary: Who would Oswald trust to solve his murder but Edward Nygma?
Relationships: Oswald Cobblepot/Edward Nygma, The Outsider/Edward Nygma
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	sometimes pieces of us linger

It was a beautiful funeral. 

The church service had been packed to the rafters, and it felt to Ed as if all of Gotham had turned up to say their final goodbyes to their beloved mayor. Every pew was filled, and he gave his eulogy, his final goodbye, to a sea of blank, unfamiliar faces. They stared impassively when his hands shook and his voice broke, uncaring that the brightest star in Gotham lay still and lifeless before them, surrounded by a sea of flowers. 

He hated them, hated the insincere condolences, the people who lied about how they had known Oswald so well, the journalists who asked Ed for a comment for their front page story. None of them cared, really. None of them knew that the church was packed with lilies because that was Oswald’s favourite flower. They didn’t care that Ed had deliberately picked all of Oswald’s favourite clothes to have him buried in. When his coffin had been lowered down into the earth none of them had noticed that Ed had chosen a burial plot directly next to that of Gertrud Kapelput. They just twittered on about how sad it was, how he’d been such a good mayor and who would step up to replace him now. As if anybody  _ could  _ replace him, as if he was just a broken cog in a machine that could be easily switched out. 

They had all left soon after the burial, filing off with words of sympathy and repulsive consoling shoulder pats. He’d been silent, still, unable and unwilling to tear his gaze away from the name on the gravestone to uphold even the barest of social niceties. Jim Gordon had been one of the last to leave, giving Ed one last long, lingering glance before stalking off into the grey afternoon. 

It had been silent for some time before Ed was finally able to look away. The cemetery was dark, and he wasn’t sure exactly when the sun had gone down. He was the only person there. He licked his lips, took a deep breath, and twisted his hands together. 

“I don’t know what to do now.” He told the grave. 

“I may have an idea.” Said a voice, a painfully, terribly familiar voice, from behind him. He turned on reflex, and automatically took a step back, his feet sinking into the soft grave dirt. 

Oswald. It looked like Oswald.

The face, the nose, the black hair, it was all the same. His eyes were insectoid, pure black, but they were lined with Oswald’s eyeshadow and liner. He was wearing the same suit he had been killed in, the white dress shirt scrubbed of the dark brown bloodstains Ed had seen when he had gone to see the body at the GCPD morgue. His skin was so pale it was almost grey, and there was a thin red line across his throat where Ed had seen it slit open. When he smiled at Ed his teeth were pointed, sharklike. 

Ed pushed his glasses up to his forehead, and pressed the palms of his hands hard into his eye sockets until his vision melted into sparks. 

“You’re just a hallucination.” He said, “You’re not real.” 

“Hm, afraid not, Edward.” He replied, his words slow and lazy, and Ed violently startled at feeling a hand grab his arm and pull it from his face. His hallucinations had never touched him before, they had tried but their hands always went through him, ghostly and insubstantial. This grip, however, felt like red hot iron, strong and burning, and when he tried to pull his arm away he was held fast with little apparent effort. He was pulled closer, until their faces were inches apart, and he got the feeling that he was being studied intently. The black, black eyes were endless and alien, but he was close enough that Ed could see the faint freckles across his nose. The smudged concealer under his eyes where Oswald always tried to cover up his dark circles and never quite fully succeeded. His arm was let go, finally, and he hugged him just as Oswald had, too. Tightly, with his face tucked into Ed’s shoulder and his fingers curled around Ed’s shoulders. Ed could even smell his cologne, along with the faint coppery scent of blood. 

“Oswald?” He gasped, “I- We buried you.”

“I know.” He pulled away, and his face was expressionless, unreadable. “You did. And what a funeral it was. The papers will write tomorrow about the beauty of the service, and about your obvious grief over the loss of your dear, dear friend. Yes, Oswald Cobblepot is dead.” 

He vanished, reappeared sitting on top of the tombstone with his heels kicking against the engraved name, and Ed was seized with a sudden violent rage. His best friend, the greatest person he had ever known, had died, and there was something here  _ taunting  _ him about it. 

“Who are you then? Why are you using his face?” He shouted, but he-  _ it  _ \- just blinked in reply, tilted its head as if it was observing an interesting specimen. “Are you one of Strange’s?”

“I am no trick of Hugo Strange.” It said the name with a venom, hissing it out from between clenched teeth. “He thinks himself to be a god, a conqueror of death, but he is nothing but another boring, unimaginative child desperately running from the darkness.” It huffed out a sharp, indignant breath through its nose and shook its head quickly before hopping down from its perch atop the gravestone. 

“Regardless, I  _ was  _ Oswald Cobblepot, the body in this grave is indeed mine.” It spread its hands wide and grinned, just as Oswald had always done when revealing a particularly clever trick. “I was murdered, and  _ you,  _ Edward Nygma, are going to solve it.” 

“Am I supposed to believe you’re a ghost, then? Am I to be your Prince Hamlet and avenge your death?” Ed sneered at the idea, his lips curling up over his teeth. His fist in his pocket gripped at his switchblade, but the thing in front of him just continued grinning when he pulled it out and flicked it open. 

“Not a ghost, no. Nothing so insubstantial.” It gestured around, and Ed watched as the earth around him broke apart in chunks, pulling apart into countless floating islands suspended over deep, thick nothingness. A giant whale, bigger than any feasible Earth creature, swam slowly, leisurely through the air above them. “I am The Outsider, and this is the void.”

"Often will I spin a tale, never will I charge a fee. I'll entertain you an entire eve, but alas, you won't remember me. What am I?”  He began laughing, beginning with a chuckle and morphing into a full belly laugh. His face was wet, and he could feel a steady chill deep his bones. The knife dropped to his feet, falling from shaking hands. It felt solid, real, everything crystal clear and sharp, but it couldn’t be. He could smell grave dirt and seawater, see the tiny chips of stone hovering in the air from where Gertrud Kapelput’s grave had crumbled upwards. Maybe grief had broken him, and he’d finally lost his last grasp on sanity. 

“A dream. Yes, you are dreaming Edward. You are not in danger of losing your mind quite yet.” It said, after his chuckles finally died down. It vanished from on top of the gravestone, reappeared at Ed’s side, offering a black handkerchief. He took it, and where their fingers met its hands were ice cold. The handkerchief was silk, and shimmered impossibly with all colours of the rainbow where the faint purple light of this dream world hit it. 

“However, just because this is a dream, Edward, does not make it less real. Dreams are an important, precious thing. They can reveal the world’s truths with a greater veracity than any other medium.” He ran the handkerchief between his fingers a few times while he considered the thing’s words. It was almost a riddle, but a very poor one.

“You’re going to tell me this is some kind of prophetic vision?” He laughed again, and gestured to the empty space and floating islands that surrounded them “Let me guess, the world is going to end?” 

Abruptly the scenery changed. 

Instead of the floating graveyard, they stood in Ed’s office in City Hall. It leaned against Ed’s desk, its back to the two figures standing behind it, silhouetted against the soft sunlight pouring through the window. Ed recognised the scene. He had lived it, short hours before Oswald had been abducted, days before he’d received the phone call that the body had been found dumped down by the docks. 

_ “I’m sorry for letting you down.”  _ Ed’s double by the window said as it turned to face its desk, its words distorted like it was speaking from underwater. 

_ “You have done nothing of the sort. I would be lost without you.”  _ Oswald’s double replied before freezing abruptly in place, and the apparition sitting on the desk closed its eyes tightly, its mouth twitching into a frown. 

“I am no longer Oswald Cobblepot, but…” It paused here, tapped its fingers against the wooden surface. “I suppose the words still hold a certain amount of truth. I have a puzzle, and you are the only one I can rely on to solve it for me.”

“Yo- Oswald’s murder.” 

“Yes. A terrible deed was committed, and a price needs to be paid.” It sighed then, deeply, and the scenery suddenly changed again. They were floating on a small rocky island above a vast, grand hall, watching faceless socialites dance as the hall around them broke into fissures of black light and collapsed in on itself. When the screaming stopped, the apparition vanished again from in front of Ed, and he felt it drape itself over his shoulders. 

“Oswald would be too short to stand like that, you are doing a horrible job impersonating him.” He told it, and it huffed a dry laugh into his ear. 

“We are sadly out of time now, Edward, so I leave you with your clue and my blessing. Search for Anton Sokolov.” 

He woke up suddenly, freezing cold, damp and dirty from sleeping on grave dirt and grass. There was a man standing above him wearing a look that was half pity and half disgust. They said something to him, but Ed didn’t even hear them, couldn’t care less about their words. He was focused on the black silk handkerchief still clutched tightly in one of his fists. 

**Author's Note:**

> Ever since I first got into Gotham I knew eventually I'd end up writing a Gotham/Dishonored fanfic
> 
> The prophesy has been fulfilled


End file.
